Adam Grant - Give And Take

Full transcript: Adam Grant on London Real

7:07 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose with me today Is mr. Timothy sheaf who is currently the most successful free-runner in the world. Thank you

7:22 Tim has his own channel on YouTube called flow you make videos for YouTube, right? I pay you to make the Google gave me a budget for some original programming this year. That’s just ridiculous You do a lot of videos with famous stuntman. I’m Damian Walters I’ve seen you on these o2 commercials now promoting rugby He does rugby touch rugby. Okay. He does these videos called life in a handstand where they’re literally his life in a handstand I can’t know I don’t know how to describe them any other way You would have first seen Tim on London Real about three months ago. It was called free running and free thinking I definitely suggest you watch that show because we watch you do all your athletics, but you wouldn’t know that this guy sleeps on the floor He’s a vegan It gets really weird. So But the star of our show today is Mr. Adam Grant, who is a professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and he is the author of Give and Take, which is a revolutionary approach to success.

8:18 Adam, you are the youngest tenured and the most highly rated professor at the Wharton School, unless you got older in the meantime. I almost went to Wharton in 1989. I was this close, but I didn’t go. We’ll talk more about that later. MIT was the right choice.

8:34 Oh, yeah, we can argue about that. Daniel Pink, who was here just a few months ago, who was the author of To Sell is Human, sat in that chair, and he says, you are one of the finest social scientists of his generation. And those are big words for Daniel. I’m trying to get him to raise his standards. Really?

8:51 Daniel doesn’t play, you know? So anyways, Adam, welcome to London. Welcome to the show. Thank you, honored to be here with you guys. No, it’s really cool.

8:58 Welcome. It’s cool, yeah. You like that? Tim, when I asked him to co-host for this, he was like, yeah, cool, we’ve been studying your stuff. It’s really cool, this whole concept you have in your book where you separate people into, you said not two groups, but three groups, which are like takers, givers, and matchers, and I thought I would just jump in there right away and see if you could kind of explain that to us or walk us through some of the concepts in your book.

9:26 Yeah, sure, so different styles of interacting with other people, taker, giver, and matcher. takers of those people we love to hate, who go out of their way and just get as much as possible from us and never want to give anything back. They’re good at free riding and shirking and social loafing, credit hogging, backstabbing. Then you have the givers right on the other end too, or the people who actually enjoy helping others and strangely prefer giving more than they get.

9:49 And you know, tend to do a lot of knowledge sharing, mentoring, often making introductions between two people who might hit it off and you know, just kind of, no strings attached, right? I’ll help you if I can. And then most of us are right in the middle as matchers, and a matcher is somebody who tries to keep an even balance of give and take. So quid pro quo, reciprocity, I do you a favor, I want an equal one back. Do your balance sheet, trying to make sure there are no credits or no debits left over.

10:13 Okay, now what I always wonder is that like, even like the serial killer in prison thinks he’s a good guy, and like every mother thinks their boy’s a nice boy, so does everyone think they’re a giver? No, so most people think they’re not takers, right? but people vary in whether they think they’re then givers or matchers. Because a lot of people think it’s pretty stupid to be a giver, right? If you’re too generous, you’re gonna get taken advantage of by the takers, you might burn yourself out, and so the safe and smart thing to do is basically keep it even and make sure that whenever you help somebody, they reciprocate.

10:44 But yeah, nobody wants to say like, hello, I’m the world’s biggest taker. Have you ever met anyone that came up to you and was like, I’m just a taker? I’ve had a few people say, after reading the book, I used to be a taker, And I’m in the process of converting myself. But I haven’t had many people really come out of the woodwork and say, like, yep, I am a self-serving bastard. Do you ever get people that they know their matches or takers and they want to be a giver, but then they’re doing it and they can’t see looking for that recognition back, that they’re like, I’m giving, I’m giving, but I’m not receiving?

11:18 And I guess that’s really not the purpose of giving. You give, and you don’t try. And even when you get things back, you don’t try to link them to anything you gave in the past, you just like get on with life, like it’s the flow of whatever, right? Yeah, I think there’s a big paradox here, right? So if, you know, part of the way I wrote the book was to say, look, you know, there’s really surprising evidence that givers are sometimes the worst performers, but also sometimes the best performers.

11:41 And it’s kind of a, it’s a sneaky way of hooking the takers to say, well, if you’re a taker, you want to be successful. And one of the surprising paths to success is actually to go out of your way to help others. And the takers are like, great. So I’m gonna become a smarter matcher, I’m gonna give first, and then I’m gonna try to get stuff back. And then they get frustrated when number one is a lot of work, and number two, they can’t always make that connection, right, I helped this person, it didn’t pay off for me.

12:04 What’s the point of all this? But I think you’re right, I think they’re often missing the point. Yeah, and you have to just trust the flow of life. And just, I think it’s the same way if you’re unhappy, and you smile, you can become happy. You don’t have to be happy to smile in the first place.

12:16 It’s the same way you start to give, then you might enjoy, you learn to enjoy giving. So in the beginning, you start to give because, oh, maybe they read this book or they’ve just heard someone else. You’ve got to give to receive. God helps those who help themselves, whatever you want to call it. So you start to give.

12:31 And then you start to enjoy the giving and you actually like, you realize, oh no, you’re not even looking for the things coming back but your life just generally starts to blossom a bit more. I think that’s often the case, right? Although there are lots of us who end up giving in ways that are totally misaligned with our skills or our interests and that’s not fun. So I think it’s worth asking, right? What’s the kind of knowledge that you really enjoy sharing?

12:53 What are the kinds of helping that you find it kind of fun to do? And I think a lot of people make the mistake of doing all their giving reactively. So whenever a request comes in, they basically grant it, as opposed to saying, no, I’m going to make offers of the kind that I find to be meaningful. And then hopefully that’s going to shift the kind of giving I do to be much more exciting and fulfilling. Well, that’s one of your bits of advice is be that proactive giver, not just a reactive giver.

13:17 Oh, OK. Is that what you’re saying? Yeah, I think it’s often easier because, so let’s take the example of connecting people, for example. One of my favorite characters in the book is this guy, Adam Rifkin, who is named Fortune’s Best Networker. And he defies almost everything I thought I knew about a networker.

13:31 He’s a shy, quiet, introvert, computer programmer, loves Star Trek. You know, not sort of your stereotypical schmoozer, right? And what Adam really enjoys doing is really introducing people. He’s a tech entrepreneur, and one of the things he does in his spare time Because he runs a non-profit group that allows entrepreneurs to support each other. And he’s always, you know, he meets an entrepreneur, he’s trying to help them find a co-founder.

13:55 Or you know, connect them up with somebody who could do some of the technology programming they don’t know how to do. And I think it’s a really great example for him because as he offers to make more and more introductions, he gets fewer requests of other kinds. And so he’s able to weed out over time, you know, some of the kinds of helping that he doesn’t love. Because everybody knows he’s such a good connector that that’s what they want to come to him for.

14:15 Okay. Interesting. So he like selects himself to be that type of giver. Yeah. Wow.

14:21 Very much so. He becomes, I guess in Malcolm Gladwell’s terms, a little bit of a maven. You know, he’s like, he’s the guy who’s known for introducing people. So why would you bother him for something else when he’s such a super connector? Okay.

14:31 Now you talk about the doormat effect when it comes to giver. What do you mean by that? So a lot of givers make the mistake of basically being generous to a fault. So they’re willing to help anybody who asks, anytime, in any way. And if somebody on the other end of that exchange is a taker, it’s really easy to get exploited.

14:51 So I think what you end up doing basically is saying yes all the time and running out of time, energy, and resources to actually achieve your own goals and just basically letting people walk all over you, which is awesome. You have to pick up on the people that you’re giving to and check that they are either matting it to other people or giving it out elsewhere and not just takers, but you can You can normally pick up on the energy of someone that’s approaching you or their general vibe. I’ve just noticed the way I go around, you can pick up on when someone’s approached you and the way they’ve approached you, how quickly they ought to try and get something from you without offering.

15:26 Do you mention that in the book, that kind of thing? Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of givers make the mistake of basically trusting all the people all the time and thinking, whoa, everybody’s capable of being helpful and generous. That may be true. That doesn’t mean everyone is going to be in their relationship with you.

15:41 Interesting thing here is some of the data on this actually show that givers are better judges of character than takers or matchers. If you’re a taker right you kind of assume it’s a doggy dog competitive world you know you can’t really trust people too much and so you guard yourself all the time and you don’t get to see the full range of behavior that people are capable of whereas the givers by trusting more they get to see some people act really generous others are selfish and over time they get to learn about the clues that sort of separate but if they don’t use that knowledge then they often get screwed over. I think that’s fascinating.

16:11 I think that makes a lot of sense. So do you have basic rules then so you don’t become a doormat? Are there anything that people can kind of know what to do and not to do? Yeah, absolutely. So rule one is be careful about giving to a taker and we’ve touched on that already but I think the way that I would play that out is to say, okay, if somebody has a history of either being self-serving with you or a reputation of that kind, then before you give to them, you either want to ask them to pay it back and act like more of a matter when you’re dealing with them. Or you want to ask them to pay it forward and sort of test them and see whether they’re willing to help somebody else. Or you decide, right, what I’m going to give to them is only going to be low cost to me. So that the ways I help them, you know, don’t suck all my time and energy or don’t put me at risk.

16:51 Okay. How do you find that saying no to people? Because now you’ve got known to be this giver. You almost get so many people approach you all the time. And I was reading one article that said you were walking between classes or something on the campus and there There were people constantly coming and asking, and you were trying to help as many people as possible, just in that.

17:08 So how do you, have you got a method now of saying no to people or what? No, how am I doing? Are you a giver, by the way? I don’t feel like it’s my place to judge. Whether you’re a giver.

17:18 Yeah, I think it’s a giver. He’s a giver. I think it’s a giver. Just met him. Yeah, how could you know?

17:22 I’ve read a few things. You should consider your service. No, this is how I know. It’s good PR. I got home last night, went on my Twitter, checked my mentions, and then it popped up with interactions.

17:32 This guy was following me before I even got a chance to follow him. I don’t know how he did that. So you could call that giver, right? But you could also call it an introvert who has to prepare for every interview he goes into because he wants to know who he’s doing. But that’s the way you actually look.

17:47 You’re aware. You’ve looked at the email. You’ve Googled someone. No one does that. That’s the thing.

17:53 I’ve tried to do that. I’ve tried to research people like that. And you’re the first person I’ve come across that’s done it so quick. I put out the tweet. I mentioned you in the tweet, and that’s right after that I mentioned you in the tweet.

18:02 I saw that you were already following me before I got to the top of the year, and I was like, this guy, he lives what his book is about. Maybe he’s a parkour fan. You know, there’s also another story behind that, which is I used to be a springboard diver, and I’ve always aspired to be an acrobat, and so when I saw some of the amazing things that you’ve done in your freeriding career, I was like, this is just amazingly cool, and I want to say more about it.

18:21 Cool. All right, thank you. Because divers really are gymnasts in disguise. They are, although I never was, but most of them, I think, are at their core gymnastically talented. You could do three and a half somersaults right into dive.

18:34 A long time ago. Yeah, that’s pretty awesome. That remains to be seen, but yeah, I guess, you know, in terms of judging, you know, I think whether you get perceived as a give or take or a match is really about the impact you have on other people. And so if you wanted to find out, you know, you kind of have to ask the people that interact with the person you’re trying to judge. Tim, to your question about saying no, I’m pretty bad at it, to be honest.

18:59 Part of writing the book and doing the research and interviewing some successful givers was, I guess, a little bit of like a me-search as opposed to a research journey for me. I can use that point. No, you would. Yeah, I’ve heard that before. No, it probably shouldn’t have been invented.

19:10 Me-search. All right. But this is what a lot of psychologists like me do. You’re interested in stuff that relates to your own life and then you can’t help but sort of apply it and reflect on it. And I think one of the things that I really learned was I had to be clear about my priorities around who am I trying to give to.

19:25 And so after I wrote the book, I said, okay, my family comes first, my wife and daughters are the people that I want to give to first and foremost. Second are my students, third are my colleagues. And then if I have any time left over, when other people reach out, I’ll be happy to help them if I can. And I think just keeping that in mind has made it a lot easier to figure out than when I do need to say no, like when a stranger reaches out, I’ll say, you know, I’d really love to help.

19:47 This semester, I have 360 students, and I have to give my time to them first. Feel free to follow up in a few months, and I’ll see if I can help you with that. That’s a good approach. We’ll see if it works. I think another thing I realized when I thought I dwelled on your approach was that when you’re a giver, people, they might not realize how much they need you or they get from you until you’re gone, and then you’d leave a hole in everything that was there because they were getting, like you said, with that guy who’s a networker. If you make yourself a specialty, and I’m sure you cover this in your book, right? That you have a specialty. Once you’re gone, then there’s a hole there. If you’re a taker, no one’s going to miss you because you were just sapping from the group.

20:23 Yeah, in fact, people might cheer when you waltz out of their network. Yeah. Yes. The taker’s gone. Yeah.

20:30 Wow. You talked about paying it forward, and that’s a weird thing. Is that something you would suggest that a giver do, that if someone asks them for something, can you literally say you go give someone else something before I give something to you? Does that break all social convention? I don’t know I think I think it can right it may depend on like the the group you’re part of and what norms they tend to follow.

20:52 I’ll bring this back though to Adam Rifkin because I think he does this beautifully. What he will do is he will frequently help you first but he’ll do it in the form of what he calls a five-minute favor which is to say look he’s not going to be Mother Teresa or Gandhi with every person he meets you know the guy he’s found in three successful companies retired in his 30s you know he’s he gets 800 emails a day so he’s got to set some boundaries. So, what he does is he looks for low-cost ways of adding value to other people’s lives.

21:19 And so, he might make an introduction for you. And then, a month or two later, he’s trying to help somebody else. And he’ll follow up and he’ll say, hey, Brian, I want to see if you can help me help that person. And at that point, he gets to see whether you’re willing to pay it forward. And if so, then you become a more important part of his network.

21:36 Then he’ll invest more time with you once you pass that little test. Exactly. A great system. And part of what he’s trying to do is really turn the people in his network into givers. And number one, it makes it a lot safer to be a giver if you don’t have to deal with as many tankers.

21:51 And two, then if everybody in the network’s a giver, whenever you need help, you can go to anybody in that network who has the best expertise to support you, as opposed to like if we were all matchers, you could only go to the people that you had traded help with in the past. Right. They owed you. Exactly. So you can convert people to become givers, is what you’re saying?

22:09 I think you can certainly, you know, bring out some of their giver instincts because we all have relationships and roles where we act, you know, more giving versus less. And so the question is then, okay, how can we basically draw out that tendency and get people to want to be helpful in this context? I actually hate takers and I can see them from a mile away. How? How do you spot a taker, Brad?

22:31 Because they ask me for things usually that aren’t appropriate or I see them taking things from other people. It’s maybe usually the latter. And I guess you said you know what I read with a character, but I just watched our behavior and then sooner or later I find that takers end up trying to take something from me or they ask me something that’s just kind of inappropriate. What do they want that’s inappropriate? You know what really winds me up is someone who doesn’t know me that well that asked me for money.

22:54 It doesn’t happen very often and it really it’s like it’s almost like an insult. I’m just like really really and it’s just like but then there’s a whole list of other people in my life that they could ask me for most of my bank account and I would give it willingly. You should be careful about how widely you broadcast that. There are a lot of takers out there waiting to pounce right now. And yet the paradox is that those people will never ask me.

23:16 Yeah. Right? I’m sure that’s something that you’ve… This is a simple fact in your research, right? That’s very interesting.

23:22 But I just get really a physical repulsive against takers and I just… I don’t know. So what do you do then? Once you recognize them? I probably excommunicate them.

23:29 What I do is I place them in the taker group and I just know, look, this person will always be wanting to take. So they’re only going to get so much of my generosity. I’m only going to let them in my social circles to a certain extent and I’m only going to open up to them to a certain extent because I effectively don’t trust them. Does that make me bad? No.

23:45 I mean, it’s not my place to judge who’s good and bad, right? And I actually think a lot of takers are, you know, are not bad people, right? They’ve just learned the hard way that, you know, that you can get exploited if you’re not careful and they kind of, yeah, they protected themselves by putting themselves first. Yeah. But I would say, you know, I had a colleague, he’s a consulting partner a couple months ago say that his technique when he finds a taker is to actually introduce them to another taker, uh, either basically so that, you know, they’re, they’re at least, you know, sort of exploiting each other as opposed to the givers and the matchers, or maybe, you know, that that person sees a little bit of a reflection of, of himself and that other taker.

24:22 And they’re like, I don’t know if I want to be like that. I don’t have any data on that particular point, but I thought it was an interesting strategy. What about telling people to their face? It’s like, Tim, you’re a taker. Read the book.

24:34 Or is that just, you’re gonna alienate people that way? I would consider that a pretty risky approach. I did get an email a couple weeks ago from a woman who had read this New York Times story on the book and she said every time she emails someone and they don’t respond, she sends them a copy of the article and says, you should read this. That’s interesting and a little bit devious. That is a bit mean, I think.

24:57 It’s judgmental, isn’t it? I think so, because you don’t know why they’re not responding, right? Maybe some of them didn’t even get the email. Is that a matching mentality she’s using? Maybe.

25:04 I think that a lot of people who are givers, when a relationship becomes too far out of balance, they will move more toward matching. If you think about a friend who only calls you when they need something, and you start to wonder, are they really invested in this friendship, how much do they care? I see that. By the way, I don’t think you’re a taker. I didn’t mean that.

25:24 You sure? You have a bunch of really cool chapters in your book, and I was just wondering if you could talk about some of them, one of them was interesting, you said how to be modest and influence people, like the power of powerless communication, and I was just wondering if you could explain that. Yeah, what is that? Yeah, what is that? I don’t know, I wrote the book and I forgot all the content.

25:44 Just forgot all about it. No, I think, so actually I got interested in this topic when I was asked, I was in my mid-20s and I had just finished my doctorate. From where’d you go? I was at the University of Michigan for grad school. Okay.

25:58 Ann Arbor. I spent a summer in Ann Arbor when I was working for Ford Motor Company. I hate to say over 20 years ago. Jesus. And it was a lot of fun. It’s a great college town, especially in the summer. Ann Arbor, a beautiful summer Michigan crazy school. Highly underrated as a town to live in. So I just finished that up and I was asked to teach like a four hour session on leadership and motivation to a group of U.S. Air Force wing commanders.

26:24 They were about one step below general and they were just like, if you’ve ever seen the movie Top Gun, they were just like the Top Gun guys, right? They all had nicknames like Stealth and Bomber and Sand Dune and they were twice my age and I walked in, I was supposed to teach these guys how to lead and, you know, I was obviously out of my element and I figured what I had to do was convince them that I was credible because why else were they going to listen to a kid who was half their age? So I came in, you know, and I opened up in a way that was pretty uncomfortable for me, which was, you know, I kind of listed my credentials and I said, look, here’s what I’ve studied and what I’ve done and, you know, what I think today’s session is going to have value. You know, very confident, assertive, dominant, like a taker would communicate, right? Look how important I am and you should all listen to everything I say. And it was a pretty bad session and afterward the feedback forms that they filled out included statements like, I learned very little from this session, but I trust the instructor learned a lot. And my favorite one was there there was more quality information in the audience than on the podium. So at that point I think what I realized was I needed to try a different way of communicating with these people that was less about establishing my power and more about you know being humble and modest and

27:40 Admitting what I didn’t know and I decided to do that by just calling the elephant in the room right away so I walked in and I said I know some of you guys read my bio and saw that I used to perform as a magician and I’d like to open with a magic trick which is I’m gonna do a mind-reading act and I pause for a minute and then I said okay there are at least four people in this room right now who are thinking what can I possibly learn from a guy who’s 12 years old and they just froze yeah like I was like oh no I think one of the guys reached for his gun and like started pointing pointing at me but then they started laughing and it really changed the tone of the session right we connected on a more human and authentic level when I had been a little bit vulnerable.

28:21 And I taught almost the exact same material and at the end the comments were basically, it was really refreshing to have a young person who understood the millennial generation. And I think that opened my eyes to the power of powerless communication that sometimes when we speak tentatively and humbly and modestly, that it may not immediately suggest that we’re super competent, but it communicates warmth and concern for others and a genuine willingness to defer to other people’s ideas and opinions. And when we have to work interdependently with someone, whether it’s a team or a client or just an audience in this case, it’s a really great way to connect.

28:58 So wrote a chapter about that. Okay, now it’s powerful. I’m sure you’ve met people that try to tell you how important they are. Yeah, and you introduced me as the most successful freewheeler, which I had never caught myself out of. I’d say that was a joke, but I wasn’t a joke.

29:14 I was just… You weren’t, so… Yeah, I wouldn’t… It’s an objective… Yeah, and it’s like something I can never really go in and say, and it makes me uncomfortable.

29:22 Well, I’m not uncomfortable, because I just accept it, I’m accepting things. But when, yeah, someone introduces me as that, and they like to use that to make them look bigger, that their friend is whatever, and then you kind of see it straight away that maybe they’re a taker, they just want to know my title, not who I am, and it’s like… That’s quite interesting, but yeah. Is that a form of taking by like doing that where you introduce someone as, look who I’m with this thing?

29:46 Yeah, self-importance by association. Okay, you put that all down. I just made that up actually. That work, yeah, that’s it, self-importance. Yeah, but I think that is something you see among takers, right?

29:58 There’s a little bit of research on how do you spot a taker on Facebook? And especially the narcissistic kind of taker, who thinks I’m special and superior to everyone else. And Bufardi and Campbell show that the takers were rated by strangers as having more vain and self-glorifying photos. So I always like to say they’re not necessarily more attractive than the rest of us every day, but you will find a greater gap between their average photo and how hot that profile picture is.

30:22 Because the takers have to put their best feet forward. I think that makes perfect sense. Interesting. So what’s Kim Kardashian? I’m always reluctant to judge people I don’t know.

30:31 I was put in the spot again. No, it’s a good question. But I do think that a lot of takers will say, well, one of the ways that I can be important is takers pictured alone in their Facebook profile photos unless they’re photographed with somebody who’s a big deal and so like if you can probably patrol Facebook and find like eight people with pictures of Tim sort of as their profile so like oh I’m important by association with this guy. It is funny you’ll meet someone and there I’ll be in a new social group probably with friends that have introduced me to friends and they’ll be semi-important or something and they’ll just like shun me as like hey whatever and then when someone talks about what I do my role or something, you must get the same. Then they want to talk to you and then it’s like, oh, yeah, you just want to talk to me now. And then it’s obvious that they see they might be, you see the cogs working in the head, I might be able to get something out of this guy. And it’s like, Jesus, but it’s not everyone’s bad. It means that’s just the way people, some people are wired. Like you said, it could be reflects from childhood, the way they’ve see the world and they’ve got to get the most out of every situation can and it doesn’t make them mean or like it’s just the way they function at the time and they might learn in future. We had a charity day when I used to work in the city at ICAP and Prince William came by for charity day and he

31:43 Came on the floor and everybody just flooded to him snapping pictures but almost in a way that was objectifying him they weren’t like can I have a picture with you or hello how are you it was the ch-ch-ch-ch and it was like one of the most ugliest displays of humanity I ever saw I was like and these aren’t They weren’t bad people, but they were just, I don’t know, what were they doing, taking… I was like, a kid came up to me once. Literally taking photos.

32:07 And I’d hate to go back on to my, yeah, whatever. But a kid came up to me once and just, because I was doing a show and people were taking pictures, and they were like, are you famous? And that was the only question in his head, was are you famous? Not who you are, what you do, anything like that. And that’s just at such a young age, that’s what they’ve bred.

32:23 To think, oh, this person’s famous, I want to be known, I want an association or whatever, with them and it’s just strange that they’re working with them. What did you say? That’s the real thing. Did you say yes? No, I can’t remember what I said.

32:32 I don’t remember. But no, I definitely didn’t say yes, but it’s just… Okay. Do companies try to employ you or try to use this strategy to change their whole corporation into a giving type of place because that’s more productive? I don’t know.

32:49 It just flew in my head. Yeah. I’ve worked with some organizations on trying to create more of a culture of giving. There’s a ton of evidence. Nathan Podsikoff and his colleagues have done some really nice analyses of decades of data showing that if you can get a group of employees to all act like givers, you tend to see a big rise in unit profits, customer satisfaction, employee retention, and you know, you think about the idea that everybody’s willing to help each other solve problems and share knowledge, you can get a lot done that way.

33:14 So I think a lot of organizations are recognizing, you know, if we have a taking or a matching norm, we might want to shift a little bit in the giver direction, and then the question is how do you do that? So I often work with organizations on things like, how do you screen out takers? Because that actually turns out to be more important than hiring givers, because a bad apple can spoil the barrel pretty easily. How do you recognize and reward and promote the givers?

33:36 And also, I think the biggest thing actually is encouraging help-seeking, because if nobody is willing to ask, you have no idea what other people need and it’s really hard to contribute. Wow. And so how do you do that? How do you get people to ask for help? I don’t think it’s easy.

33:49 And I think for a lot of people, especially if you’re a tanker, it’s a sign of weakness, right? You’re admitting that you don’t know something, you’re appearing dependent or incompetent in some way. I think that, you know, one of the easiest ways to break that, obviously, is to try to model it from the top. So I’ve worked with a couple of senior executives and, you know, actually encourage them to open up a little bit more and say, you know, here are the places that I don’t know the answers.

34:10 Here, you know, here are the areas that I really am relying on your help and you start to see people who are quote unquote more powerful than you do it and it’s like, okay, this isn’t such a wimpy move. Yeah. Now you teach, you actually teach students, you said 360 students you’ll have this year, is that right? Something like that. And I mean that must take a lot of your time and you’re busy also doing research or writing books and I always wonder what it’s like for a professor like walking into that class every day, you got to communicate, it’s tough, undergrads want a lot of your time, you know, how do you get excited to do that and how do you balance that with, you know, all this other stuff you have to do?

34:45 So I guess two answers to that, first one is I think there’s a wide variety of research suggesting that we are better at serial than parallel processing. So doing things sequentially as opposed to trying to do multiple things at the same time works a lot better. So we can’t multitask really. We’re pretty bad at it. Yeah, that’s what I heard too.

35:03 Yeah, so performance suffers in all domains, right, when we try to juggle a lot of things at once. So what I typically have is I have a teaching semester and a non-teaching semester. So in the fall, almost all I do professionally is, you know, interacting with students, teaching, trying to give advice when people come and ask for it, and then I take the winter and spring and do much more research and writing and speaking, and I think that helps. And in terms of then the question of being energized with students, I can’t imagine not being.

35:31 I remember when I was a student having professors who just brought so many interesting ideas to the classroom, and there was always an element of a surprise or a twist or an insight that I could apply to my own life, and I find it really exciting to try to pay that forward as much as I can. And I think having really talented, motivated students, it energizes you. You come into class and they’re like, okay, so how would you deal with this problem? You’re like, I don’t know, let’s talk about it. And it’s, I think, a really great opportunity to learn as well as to teach.

35:59 And they’re always the same age, 20 or so. Yeah, they managed to really stay constant. I don’t know how they do that. There was some movie, it was like an old movie called Breaking Away. It was like an old movie where they would ride bikes and they lived near a college and the guy was I was like, yeah, every year I get one year older and they stay the same.

36:17 Because like, they probably take your course as sophomores or juniors. Yeah, I get a lot of juniors and seniors in the undergrad course. So 2021, they just stay. Yeah, but then, I mean, that’s one of the virtues of teaching MBA and executive students is you don’t feel quite as old. Okay, all right, well, because they’re a little bit older, obviously.

36:31 You know, I remember having like some lectures when I was at MIT and the professor was like so engaging and so awesome that I almost like stood up and gave like a applause at the end. I didn’t, but there were some times where they were just explaining this concept and something, and it was like clicking, clicking, clicking. And I was just like, this is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen in my life. And I really treasured those professors. Do you remember who they were?

36:54 Yeah, there was this one guy that taught this class called Dynamics, which is like a third year mechanical engineering course, and it’s really complicated. It’s just like how to model something rolling, going up in an elevator while the earth spins around and how to model all that stuff. And I think we’re getting to something because you talked about someone who never thanked a teacher, I think in one of your TED Talks, and I forgot his name, but I didn’t go up and say thank you to him.

37:16 And are you gonna tell me that was bad? No, no, not at all. You know, I think it actually is more meaningful now than it would’ve been at the time. Because I think you teach and you see students every day and of course you expect some of what you say to stick that day, although maybe it doesn’t. But I think where it really makes a difference is somebody goes five, 10 years out of your class and they still remember that lesson they say here’s how I used it or here’s who I shared it with and you’re like wow something I did actually mattered or was at least remembered. So I think it becomes more priceless every day to share it. It’s not too late. Maybe I’ll call them up.

37:53 I read that you have worked with Google, Google call you up if they got problems right? Is that true? I think I more call them up with ideas. Oh really? I sometimes persuade them that we should work on stuff together. The search engine’s down.

38:08 Not so much. NFL as well. Do NFL? Yeah. I’ve done a little bit of work with the NFL player engagement directors, so they’re mostly the people who try to keep football players, or American football players, I should say, out of substance abuse problems, out of debt, and they basically manage all the dynamics outside of the athletic field.

38:29 And they were interested in understanding how do you motivate people to stay on track and to make sure that they don’t lose sight of their commitment to their team, which was a lot of fun to work on, okay, how would you actually do that? What do you tell them and what’s your process of doing that? It varies a lot by the organization. So in the NFL context, what we were doing was we were looking at differences in personality traits and trying to figure out, okay, once you understand the personality of your players, so for example, which players tend to be more conscientious and, you know, organized and disciplined, which ones are more spontaneous and carefree, then there are different ways of motivating those two groups and you probably also want to pay more attention to one of those groups than the other.

39:09 So I was trying to, I was introducing them to some basic frameworks for understanding major personality traits and then getting them to think creatively about how would you adjust the way you motivate one player versus another. Yeah, because you do have to treat them all individually. You can’t just tell the whole group, hey, you all better do this, right? Exactly. And what about Google?

39:26 What kind of things do you, do you help them with that you can tell us at least? So I, I’ve had a, just a blast learning from Google and working with them. I think it’s a fascinating organization and Tim, you can obviously speak to that as well. One of my favorite projects has been on job crafting. So Amy Rzeski at Yale and Jane Dutton at Michigan invented this idea that you probably experienced on a regular basis, which is to say, a lot of us have job descriptions and then we end up customizing our jobs and doing them in ways that are totally different from what we were assigned to do.

39:55 So like you might add a task or a project that nobody even gave you. You might have found a way to delegate away like your least favorite task and somebody else actually loves that task and you kind of traded it over. And the idea is innovating on your job to align it better with your strengths and your interests and your goals. And a lot of people sort of like this idea, but they don’t know quite where to start. So we partnered up with Google to try to figure out, this is with Amy and Justin Berg, could we actually structure a way for people to engage in this job crafting idea?

40:26 So they went through like a two hour workshop where they started out by mapping the basic building blocks of their jobs. So what do they spend their time and energy on? the biggest tasks to the smallest ones. Then they take a step back and they look at their interests and their strengths and their values. And then they try to basically re-engineer their jobs to better align with those interest strengths and values.

40:44 And we had a randomized controlled experiment so people got different versions of this exercise and we were able actually in this two hour workshop to significantly boost the happiness and the job performance of Googlers for at least a six month period. Which was really fun. But there was a British caveat. So, we got to London and we asked, we were working with a group of Google engineers, and we asked them to start thinking about their strengths so they could build, you know, what they were really skilled at into their jobs.

41:11 And one of the engineers raised his hand and he said, I’m sorry, but you know, here in England, we don’t have strengths, you know, we’re not as overconfident and optimistic as you Americans. And I said, okay, point taken. So, you know, we want to figure out, you know, what are you more talented at than, You know, maybe it’s not as big a part of the job that you do as it could be. And he said, all right, let me think about this. And he came back to us about five minutes later and he said, I figured out how Brits can identify their strengths.

41:38 I made a list of all of my weaknesses and my least weak weakness I will call the strength. I thought that was touching. That is funny. I guess it’s ultimately communication. So if you’re not communicating with the people, then you’re not doing your job.

41:51 So whether it’s just speaking Spanish or they’re speaking, in this case, British English, you have to find a way of getting that out of them, huh? Yeah. And actually, the communication piece became really interesting, too, because people got to make these visual diagrams of what they wanted their job to look like. And it was supposed to be more ideal, but still realistic. And so, you know, you’re tinkering on the margin, you’re trying to figure out, can I spend less time on meetings and email and more time on this really interesting project?

42:14 And then you had to go and talk to your manager about it, right, and get support for it, or kind of share it with your team. And I think as people shared more of these ideas, like, you learn, I didn’t know you had that skill, or that talent, or that strength, then we could probably utilize that more effectively. Is Google on the cutting edge, you think of like employee, what’s the right word, of like, I don’t know, employee empowerment, or? Their offices are really cool.

42:37 I’ve not been to them, actually, but I hear they’re like amazing. I read an article about the place in New York, and just the way it’s constructed, and it’s not as crunchy internet as you might think, because there’s a method behind the madness of like where everything’s open plan and actually all the free food but it’s funny the sweets are actually in like these translucent jars and they put the healthy options first and they found that if people see water like 70% of the chance if they see it first they’ll take it so they put the water in the front but they put the other drinks in the back they’re not like you know they’re not daddy and mommy telling you what not to eat but I mean like this is cutting-edge stuff right yeah I think one of the things that Google does that that I think is completely cutting edge is, they have a people analytics team that actually uses data to inform all the decisions they make about people.

43:25 So from who to hire, to how to compensate your employees, to what benefits to offer. Using data to make a decision? Yeah, I mean, how could you do that? But what I love about it is, they’re doing it in a place that most organizations don’t. So everybody uses data for financials, right?

43:41 But I think what they realized was that it’s obviously a data-driven company And many of the engineers, or former engineers, are now in senior executive positions. So if they wanted to really make a case for the importance of people issues, then they had to have evidence behind it. So they have a whole, there’s this people innovation lab that does amazing work where they partner with academic researchers and insiders to do lots of experiments and actually test what works most effectively in terms of motivating and retaining and attracting Googlers.

44:11 It’s a, I’ll actually tweet out that article. It’s just really fascinating about how they built their campus and they didn’t include a gym in the building because they found that people didn’t want to bump into their colleagues at the gym so they give them a free membership to wherever they want yeah but then they give but they give on on-site massages and all this other stuff and so thought-out and the amount of like the amount of money a single like coder or whatever generates so high that like they can afford to make these all these gifts because they get like crazy productivity out of them so but they don’t have anyone to train free running skills so is this something you’ll be doing in their offices. That would be so cool.

44:46 They could just build, like, instead that they would have a slide next to the stairs. I think they do have a slide. Maybe they do. In Mountain View they do. Okay, then we need to go beyond the slide and come up with, like, not a fireman’s pole.

44:57 Some of them have some kind of, like, swings on, like, bars and things to get down. Some monkey bars down. Dude, this sounds crazy, but you should go to Mountain View and just, like… Where’s Mountain View? California.

45:06 It’s like… Is that the… It’s the center of Silicon Valley? Yeah, okay. One of the centers.

45:11 Yeah. wanted to do? Or not? In the Google? Yeah, I bet it is. It’s pretty, well you’ve been there? I’ve never been there. Yeah, it’s a really fun office. Next time I’m there I’ll try and see if I can get them to hook me up. Yeah, there are slides and multi-level things and all that stuff. Yeah, slides, bowling alley, jazz studio, lots of game rooms. Do you ever think about bagging your academic job and going into the private sector? Rarely. I think I have like the coolest job on earth because you know I get to pick like these these problems that I think are really interesting and important that you know relate to the quality of life at work which I think most of us spend majority of our waking hours at work so trying to make you know that world a little bit better I think is really meaningful and really enjoyable and you know I love trying to inspire students and share knowledge with them. I think there are moments particularly when doing grading when I think okay there are probably some some jobs in the private sector where you know you can take this out of your your responsibility and delegate it, but I can’t imagine anything else I would want to do.

46:14 Is that because you don’t like giving C’s and D’s or it’s just arduous? Yeah, I have both an ideological and an empirical objection to grading curves and occasionally they’re required. You don’t believe in them? No, I mean there’s a ton of research showing pretty consistently that if you put in effort and you don’t get the result that you deserve just because somebody got a higher score than you, then that tends to reduce your motivation to learn. And I think that’s a travesty, right?

46:43 If you can’t design a test that’s hard enough to create a natural distribution, then I think you’ve failed as a professor. Interesting. We used to always grade on the curve at MIT, and it was brutal. It is brutal. It was just brutal.

46:56 I mean, if you want your students to not be takers in their relationships with each other, then why would you pit them against each other and say, the more you succeed, the more your peers are gonna fail. Wait, what’s that? So, you know, they give a test, and then everyone scores, say, between 0 and 100, and they take that and they form a bell curve at it, like a stochastic kind of average, and then they take like a standard deviation. So say, for example, the average was 60, and you got a 50, that means you’re below average by a certain amount, and you get a D. Now, if the average was 90, and you got an 80, you would still get a D, you know, that kind of thing.

47:32 So you’re judged on how other people do. Am I explaining that well? Yeah. Very clear. Okay.

47:40 I’ve got an engineering degree. So it should just be, yeah, it should just be everyone on the same… It’s interesting. It’s like the Daniel Pink idea is where he questions, you give people more money, they do more work, and you’re questioning the fact of, yeah, bringing people on a bell curve. Oh, so you have to be the best in the class.

47:51 Yeah, exactly. In order to get an A. Oh, what? You know, we see this in companies, too, right? So there are a lot of companies that use forced rankings, where a certain number of employees can get, you know, a five on a one to five scale, and then, you know, you have more employees in the middle.

48:04 And I think it’s important to evaluate performance, but what if you actually had six or seven people who achieved exceptional performance, and you can only give that rating to four, why would you force them to artificially have a worse score? Because then they’ll quit, and they’ll be like, I’m not being valued. Definitely. And then you get someone else in that might only appear in the same position, but do a lot less work on this graph or whatever. I see so many people in their workplace that just quite literally hate their job, and no one cares.

48:31 And I mean, there’s a human resources department, but no one seems to be really thinking, wow, if everybody walked in every day thinking, I’m gonna kill it, the productivity would probably go up like 600%, as opposed to your average worker in an office seems to be dragging themselves through. Is that a fair assessment? Yeah, I think it certainly varies from one organization to another. But I’ve dealt with plenty of organizations where people come in really depressed and discouraged.

48:56 They don’t think their work is interesting or meaningful, and they give only a fraction of what they’re capable of. I think there are also some amazing organizations where you see the opposite, right? And I think that’s one of the reasons that so many people are drawn to a place like Google. Right. I mean, like, what’s such an old school place?

49:10 Like, I’m not saying this exists, but, you know, say you go as old school as like Ford Motor Company, you know, near Ann Arbor, and you walk into this organization with, you know, 300,000 employees and stuff, and they’ve been in business for 100 years, and I mean, is there anything you can do to places like that, or? I don’t know if I can do anything. I think there, you know, there are probably things that the leaders and managers can do. So one of the things I ended up writing about in Give and Take was this fundraising call center that I studied at the University of Michigan, so right in Ann Arbor.

49:40 So these are people who are contacting university alumni and trying to get them to donate money for the school to support new buildings and athletic programs and faculty and staff salaries and callers were totally burned out. It’s really hard to call and ask people for money. It’s especially hard when 90% of the people you call reject you and yell at you for ruining their dinners. What is their success rate as a person? It varies a lot by call center, but when I walked in, it was below 10%, which was pretty frustrating.

50:11 So for every 10 calls, you’re getting nine no’s and two fuck you’s. Pretty much. It’s interesting, actually, because a lot of the people will say things like, yeah, I already gave 100,000 pounds to this university, it was called my tuition. Yeah, stop asking me for more, so I was really interested in what can we do to motivate these callers and the managers had tried and failed with a lot of different interventions, like they tried to give you more flexibility in the script, but they have this script that’s boiled down to a science to make the ask effective.

50:45 They tried to give callers more breaks, callers don’t come back to work because the job is so unpleasant. Really what struck me and Howard Huebner, the manager there, was that a lot of the callers had no idea where the money went. So they raised all these funds and then they disappear. And so we decided let’s have the managers give a little bit of an inspirational speech and talk about where the money goes. We did that and we started a little experiment.

51:08 So some of the callers got to hear it and other callers didn’t and it did no good. Average caller just basically kept stagnating and some of the callers even got less effective. And, which was just bad, right, your manager stands up and tries to inspire. That’s because they’re takers. Maybe, you know, it might well be, in one case in particular.

51:26 But I think what was really interesting was we realized at some point, maybe we had the right message but the wrong source. So when a leader or manager, you know, starts talking about how important your work is, if you don’t have a close relationship with that person, your first reaction might be like, all right, this person’s trying to motivate me to work harder, they’ve gotten ulterior motive and I don’t want to be persuaded to work harder if you’re not going to give me anything more. They’re taking.

51:49 Yeah, exactly. Okay. So we said, all right, let’s bring in a scholarship recipient, a student who was able to attend the university because of the money that the callers raised. He talked for just five minutes to a group of the callers. He said, you made my scholarship possible.

52:03 I wanted to come here, but I couldn’t afford it. Thank you. And here’s how it’s changed my life. And the average caller boosted 142% in weekly minutes on the phone, 171% in weekly money raise. And that lasted for a full month from just a five minute interaction.

52:18 Ended up replicating that about five times. And I think it suggests something really powerful for an organization that is struggling with motivation, which is a lot of us work on products and services where we never get to see the end user, the client, the customer, the patient. And so if we can establish that connection and show people how their work makes a difference, I think we can really help them feel more valued and appreciate it and maybe boost their motivation too.

52:39 It’s a long answer. Yeah, that is a great message though. Yeah, and then you had the numbers that actually backed it up, right? Surprisingly, yeah, I didn’t expect it to work, which is why we replicated it so many times. But I think, you know, you see this now more and more in organizations.

52:55 You know, Facebook, for example, is bringing in users for focus groups to talk about the site. And after a while, their marketing people realized, well, maybe we should let these people talk to the engineers. because people would come in and they’d say like, yeah, this changed my life. I was able to reconnect with a family member I couldn’t find for 20 years. Or, you know, I met my spouse on Facebook.

53:15 And, you know, you tell the engineers this and allow them to see how their work can make a difference. And all of a sudden they become really motivated to want to make this site even better. Wow. You know, there’s an element of gratitude in there as well where the scholarship student got to express gratitude. And where does that whole expressing gratitude come in this whole give and take dynamic?

53:35 I think a lot of people confuse taking and receiving. Okay. So, you know, I’ve had people say things like, well, if there were no takers, there wouldn’t be any givers. And I’d say, no, taking is using someone. So, you know, I’m just trying to get something and, you know, I have no interest in you or our relationship, whereas I think receiving is saying, look, you know, I recognize that I need something or I would really benefit from your help.

53:59 I will, you know, express proper gratitude for that. And then when the opportunity presents itself, I will be willing to pay it back or pay it forward. And I think that that expression of gratitude, when you do it as a receiver as opposed to a taker, is really critical to keeping givers motivated because it allows them to feel that their help was valued and that it’s worthwhile to continue trying to support other people. Do you have a gratitude journal?

54:23 I don’t. Do you? No. I write it down like once a year, I try and write down everything I’m grateful for. the sun. I wrote on Turtles on my last one. Turtles? Yeah, I’m grateful. I like Turtles.

54:34 That’s cool. But I just wrote, but I don’t do it daily. Some people do it daily, right? Some people write it out daily. I tried for a while, but I tried it, but I couldn’t keep it up. I just couldn’t keep it up. But apparently the act of actually writing everything really gets it in the system. I have a dream journal. I wake up and write my dream. That’s smart.

54:53 I think there’s like, that’s just subconscious. I think your dreams are like how your subconscious would respond to every situation, because you’re not conscious of these, and you’re watching yourself play out these scenarios, and that’s what you need to learn is to control your subconscious to be pure and nice, because obviously you don’t always do nice things in dreams, you beat people up from whatever that can happen. And so that’s what your subconscious would respond to those situations.

55:18 When you can control that, and you become truly like nice, then you become, either you get lucid dreams, or you can control them, and you’re conscious in the dream, or you just have completely pleasant dreams, I guess. So when you wake up and you write something down, like something bad you did, then do you try in your conscious life to learn more? Yeah, then you think where is that coming from, you know, and then it’s just something to work with. It’s lessons, like we dream a third of our life, right?

55:42 And everything that I think happens for a reason, so there’s a big message, that’s a large chunk of our lives spent, and again, scientists don’t know why we sleep, obviously there’s recovery and things, but they don’t know why we dream, sorry. I don’t even think they know why we sleep, I think the recovery can be done in like an hour. know that really what we sleep so there’s a massive thing to be looked at it we’re very we’re going off topic is your field you have any thoughts no I know nothing about any of this yeah but actually the journaling subjects Brian there’s a study by Sonia Lubomirsky showing that if you keep a gratitude journal once a week you get happier than if you do it every day okay and so it’s also easier thank you for that yeah because I think every day it’s like god damn it I’m not grateful for those turtles anymore.

56:25 Again, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they’re making me write it every day. Yeah. Whereas if you pick one day once a week, make time for it, Sony thinks there is like a sort of an novelty element. You do it once a week and you come up with fresh things, whereas it’s hard to find something new to be grateful for each day, you know, in a way that really stands out and boosts your satisfaction.

56:42 Oh, that’s cool. Now, here’s a question Tim and I were talking about before you got here. Can you type your gratitude journal or do you need to hand write it? Yeah. Actually, not only can you type it or hand write it.

56:53 You can also dictate it, so audio record it. Jamie Pennebaker has studies showing that the medium doesn’t seem to matter, so when he got people to hand write journals, to type, to put them in a tape recorder, got the same results. You don’t listen back, you just get it out of your system. Yeah. You don’t even need to listen back.

57:08 Would you listen back? Maybe that’d make you double grateful. No, I don’t think I’d listen back. I haven’t seen a study on that actually, although I do know a few people anecdotally who every few months they’ll go back and read through their journals, just to see what are the themes and what’s on my mind, which I think is interesting. I’m going to try this.

57:23 I’m going to try this. Yeah, I’m going to try this. Your giving go outside of the workplace because you do a lot of things to do with work and making companies more successful and people happier and that, but does it go like to the planet? Have you ever thought about that? Are you vegan?

57:38 Are you vegan or anything like that? I’m not. No. So I’m pretty bad at the… Do you not think then you could be taking from the planet?

57:44 Yeah. No, I’m a huge planet taker. I’m not realizing. You’ve got to try and put power on it here. Thank you, Tim.

57:49 Sorry. Expose. You have to see it through other people’s eyes, right? So now we get a little bit of my true colors. I think, you know, it’s really interesting.

57:58 I think that a lot of people look at, you know, giving is just an interpersonal thing, but it’s actually, you know, a lot of people will say, you know, if you’re taking from the planet, you’re harming a lot of people with a lot of future generations. And it’s something that I have not thought enough about nor done any research on. But you can only commit to one thing at a time, and you’re so busy helping these other things that it’s not something that’s necessarily you can put your time towards at this stage, but maybe- excuse for.

58:21 That’s a cop-out. Yeah, that’s an excuse. Yeah. So you’re like, all right, family and work are the two biggest priorities of my life, so I clearly have no time for the entire planet that supports those things to happen. Yeah, yeah.

58:32 Bastard. Yeah. But I think it’s something worth thinking about and that would be really interesting to study. Yeah. I think as you take down the layers and you break things down, you get to that chapter where you’re like, yeah, actually, maybe there’s other things where you don’t realize because it’s not as evidential, because other people don’t think about it either as well.

58:51 That is a very, very fair critique. Only a vegan would bring that point up. You want to hear my vegan joke? It was a fair point going. I got a vegan joke.

58:58 How can you tell us someone’s a vegan? I’ve heard it going. You have? Just give them five minutes and they’ll tell you. Yeah.

59:06 All right, okay. I like it. But actually Tim makes a really good point as in like, I guess you’re constantly taking from the planet and the resources and all that, And that’s got to be in your mind and that’s got to affect you as a person. But it’s not with most people. That’s the thing.

59:20 It’s ignorance. Or is it subconsciously? It may be subconsciously. I think it’s subconsciously. And it comes up in you.

59:25 Do you ever have dreams where you’re like destroying the plan now? No. Jesus. No. Don’t worry about your dreams.

59:31 No, but I bet it is subconscious. I bet part of you knows you’re killing pigs and chickens and cows and eating them and I don’t know. Maybe not. We’re just brought to ignore it from like the first mouse and mother feeds us of meat and it tells us it’s chicken nuggets. And then the first thing we learn is animals on the farm, and then the next thing we’re eating them.

59:50 I would never have eaten them if my parents, sorry, I’m digressing. You have a good point? Yeah, I think it actually, it connects to one of the themes that I’m really interested in, which is I think one of the reasons that I don’t do some of these things is I don’t feel like my behavior makes a difference. Whereas when I’m helping a student who’s looking for a job, they know exactly how I’m gonna have an impact. Whereas when you think about the environment or animals, It’s like, this is just a drop in the bucket.

1:00:14 I need everybody else to change their behavior. You’re not valuing yourself enough then. Clearly not. No, you’ve got to valuing yourself up. All right, so we need a therapy session here.

1:00:22 What’s your hourly rate? No, man. I just love talking about this stuff. It’s great philosophy, but it’s, yeah, the more I work on myself, the more the world around me changes, and the more I see givers in my life come into me, it’s amazing. So let me ask you guys a question on that, which is, who are the biggest givers that you know?

1:00:40 And let’s put this in a professional context. I think we all know a ton of people who are big volunteers or philanthropists, but in terms of how people do their jobs, their general helpfulness and generosity, who stands out? Me. No. Done.

1:00:54 Well, actually, I mean, Brian, for you, you’ve had a lot of guests on this show. Is there somebody who struck you as really helpfulness or helpful or generous? As a giver, yeah. One person actually does. She’s a TED fellow, Rachel Armstrong was on, and she works at the University of Greenwich.

1:01:10 And her whole thing is, I’m probably not doing her a very good service, but she works on kind of a micro, almost like a microbiotic scale and how these little small devices that aren’t actually living can help rebuild, keep Venice afloat and all those kind of things like that. But when I had her on as a guest afterwards, she basically just gave, she sent me emails, recommended all sorts of TED Fellows, the retweeting, the helping us push the episode And just like, she’s like, I love what you guys are doing and I want to help and just try to do everything I can for you. That’s awesome, as opposed to making it all about her.

1:01:46 Yeah, yeah, I guess that all going dark on me. I get a lot of people that go dark on me after the show. I mean, I love, I meet them, we have a really good chat and then it’s just like, it’s kind of gone. And I don’t necessarily mean that they’re taking, maybe they’re just, you know, busy. Yeah, people are busy.

1:01:59 People are busy. What are they? But anyways, that’s the first one that springs to mind. Rachel Armstrong. Yeah, Rachel’s gonna be a big shout out.

1:02:06 We need to send this to her as a way of recognizing a giver. Yeah, I guess that’s good. And I guess recognizing her is important for me, right? Show a little gratitude. I’m trying to work that in here.

1:02:14 Okay, all right. Done. Okay. Tim, how about you? Yeah.

1:02:18 I don’t know, I’ve got one friend, he’s a musician and he’s just the nicest, happiest person I’ve ever met and he just is happy to help and everyone loves him and values him. And I think, like I said, if a giver gets taken out of a group, there’ll be a massive hole. And I just think if you went, I know so many people that would just be, like friends and family that would be like, wow, he’s such a loving person that just radiates it. And it’s one of those things where to give, you kind of have to have enough energy yourself.

1:02:43 And I think a lot of takers, it comes from the childhood, maybe they’ve not had the best, not every time, but they’ve just been either raised a certain way, that they don’t know how to maintain their own energy and their own happiness, that they feel that they’re constantly trying to just draw energy from other people and taking it as a method. And when people are happy and loving, they tend to be the biggest givers because they’ve got so much overflowing energy for themselves. can give it on to others and they can get along and not see everything as a negative as giving to receive they’re just giving because they’ve got so much overflow of love for everything you know. If this giving thing was so wonderful how come we don’t see more of it? That’s what I always wonder I mean like when you’re everything Tim said makes complete sense the more you give counterintuitively the better you feel the better everything feels and everything but if you look at this world it seems like kind of a because it doesn’t encourage it because it’s brought up to think it’s dog eat dog. But you surround yourself with, like the more you, it’s how you see the world is what happens around you.

1:03:39 So as you see more givers around you and like you show gratitude, more reasons to be grateful appear. That’s the way I see the world. Do you have thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean I think the takers, I think the takers cause a lot of the problems. So, you know, we want to give, but then we find people who are willing to exploit us and then we sort of get stuck, right?

1:03:59 We feel like, you know, seems like a good idea, but then, you know, I really got burned in this situation, and why should I take the risk anymore? I think the other thing that holds people back is just not being clear about what other people need. So, you know, you feel like you go about your day, you don’t know who is in a critical position where they need your help, and you don’t know necessarily how to match up those potential recipients with basically what you have to offer, because a lot of us do keep our problems and our challenges to ourselves.

1:04:26 I think that goes back to the help-seeking point, right? If we could get actually the givers to be more comfortable asking so that they allow the other people in their lives to be givers, then we might actually see, excuse me, more of it. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, grab that. Go ahead, don’t worry. Sorry.

1:04:41 Yeah, that’s all right, I can, we can take that. Yeah, yeah. Now, who else gives to you? I mean, like when you do all your video production, all of that stuff, do you know? Are you surrounded by givers?

1:04:51 Yeah, you know what is, in London, and this is funny, It doesn’t seem in London, there’s a lot of takers, but maybe they’ve just worked so hard getting to the point they’re at that they don’t feel they should give any more and they should just get things. And when I go back, I film a lot of my stuff in Derby and everyone there is so friendly and willing to help. It’s amazing, like they all just want to work on a project together. And I don’t know if they’ve not got much else to do or if that’s just the way they’re raised.

1:05:15 Is this, do you find that in urban environments that be the people perceive there to be more takers? More doggy dog environment. And I also want to know what you think about the media, because if we get fed all of this, what I call the, I don’t call the news, the news, I call it bad news, and if we get fed all this bad news, is that a way of enforcing our taker awareness or something? Yeah, I’ve definitely had a lot of people say, you know, New York is full of takers, or Washington, D.C. or London is full of takers, and you know, I think that there may be some truth to that in the sense that in more densely packed environments, there’s There’s often a greater sense of scarcity and also a greater sense of anonymity.

1:05:53 If you’re in a little rural community where they’re just a few people and you all know each other and you have a lot of space for yourselves, it’s easier to feel like we can help each other without necessarily ruining each other’s lives. Because anonymity is a taker’s Disneyland, right? It is, yeah, absolutely. If you can hide in the shadows, then you can take without ever suffering the consequences. But I think the data on this are really mixed.

1:06:20 There are some studies by Van de Leeuwen and colleagues that show that across cultures where you see the strongest taker values are in places where you have not only resource scarcity but also extreme weather conditions. So in places where it’s super hot or super cold and you’re facing a lot of poverty or resource constraints, it becomes really hard to share in ways that don’t sacrifice your own family. And that’s where you really get the doggy time. Yeah, people can’t think about giving until they’ve got security for themselves and the family, right?

1:06:49 So it starts at that point. Wow. That’s true in a lot of cases. And what about the media? I mean, does that play into it or, you know, the fact that a lot of the news is there only to kind of deliver you the bad news?

1:07:01 Is that part of the whole process? Yeah. So there’s this, Kahneman and Tversky have this research on the availability bias that you guys might have seen where the easier it is to think of something, the more common and important it seems to be. And so we tend to basically over rely on what’s salient or vivid for us and assume that that’s everywhere. And I think if you see basically examples of people stealing and cheating and lying in the media all the time, then even if that’s pretty rare, you begin to believe it’s more common than it actually is.

1:07:32 Yeah. Yeah, it’s like when you get a hater, I’m sure you have some haters. And then like those, first of all, you probably get 10 compliments and you’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. hate that you focus on. And then you take that and you magnify it and think it’s a larger percentage of the people when it’s probably 1%. Yeah, yeah. But it’s just how you deal with it. And sometimes there’s a message about it. How do you deal with it? Well, if it hurts you, then it’s obviously reflecting somewhere. Maybe it is something that often you’ve thought about it, but they just don’t know that you’ve thought about what their comment is. It’s hard to explain, but yeah, it’s hard to fight off and you just have to let it go.

1:08:10 But if you’re happy and love yourself and content, then it doesn’t matter. But it’s obviously, it’s hard to do that all the time. Yeah, but I guess the reason it’s probably sailing it to you is because maybe you’ve already recognized it in yourself. You’re like, ah, you got me. Yeah.

1:08:24 I don’t know. How old’s your daughter, Adam? I have one who’s almost five and another who’s two. Okay, now the generation is always gonna be the younger generation coming up. How do you teach a five-year-old to be a giver?

1:08:36 Or is that too hands-on? do you not want to teach people to be givers? I have very mixed reactions to the whole idea. I think, you know, I never wanted to be one of these psychologists who screws up their kids by over applying what they do professionally at home. Which does happen all the time, right?

1:08:52 I’ve seen it enough that I’m terrified of it, yeah. Luckily though, I’m an organizational psychologist and so my training is mostly about workplace behavior and adult dynamics, so I don’t know a lot about clinical or developmental issues, so I have less knowledge to inflict upon them. God is. Which is good. Well, thank you one day.

1:09:10 Yeah, we hope, right? But I think, you know, certainly it’s important to me to cultivate, you know, a spirit of helpfulness and generosity in my family, and my wife, Alison, is a phenomenal, she’s the best example of a giver at home I’ve ever met, so I’ve learned a lot from watching what she does. If you look at the research on this, what does it take to actually, like, raise a child who’s going to be more giving? There are a couple of things you can do.

1:09:33 One that I really like, Chris Bryan has these studies showing that kids do helpful stuff every day. So, you know, they share a crayon, you know, they offer some food, you know, they may clean up the room for their younger sibling. And how you label that as a parent is really important. So if you say that was really helpful, it doesn’t do nearly as much good if you say you were really helpful. So basically labeling the person as a giver as opposed to just commenting on the giving act.

1:09:59 They’re more likely to internalize it, especially as young kids. Okay. So he shows that the kids will give more if you label them as helpers or givers as as opposed to thank them for helping and giving. I’m trying to remember that, that’s a good one. It’s a simple one, but I think you repeat that.

1:10:13 Do you apply that? Do you apply that? Again, I don’t want to overdo it, but in certain times, like when I see our older daughter, Joanna, go out of her way to help Elena, her younger sister, they fight sometimes, so when she helps, I want to go out of my way and say, Joanna, you are really helpful, thank you. Cool, absolutely. Yeah, that’s a tricky one, isn’t it?

1:10:36 When it comes to try to motivate your kids. Because it’s weird too, because you see them do some nice things during the day and then kids can do some horrible things during the day. Where I guess as parents, you probably focus on those. You know, why are you doing that? I guess you should be like trying to be the focus of the good stuff.

1:10:52 Okay, that’s like an American parenting thing. Like you’re so good at this, you’re so good. Some people say American parents overdo it. Big time. There’s a book on this called Generation B.

1:10:59 Okay. By Gene Twenge, which I really enjoyed reading and it’s a wonderful critique of basically how a lot of parents are screwing up the generation of millennials by boosting their self-esteem and making them feel great about things and have no substance behind them. And creating these very fragile egos where you got a trophy every time you finished in last place at anything and you thought you were really special and then you get into this harsh reality of the world of work and you can’t take any constructive criticism.

1:11:28 I see that a lot with free running. So I go to an academy and I see there’ll be a young kid that’s 10 years old and then one’s like, this kid’s amazing he’s going to be the next best kid in the world like when he’s always going to be the best in the world and then he does a flip and everyone’s like oh my god and it’s like that approach is just going to breed just like he’s going to get bored so quickly because he’s going to think he’s achieved everything you have to like rate that kid as equivalent as everyone else there just treat him like an adult treat him as though he’s equal to everyone and don’t give him extra praise because otherwise he’s going to get bored or he’s going to grow an ego and it’s like if you treat him okay so that was nice but what’s the next thing you can do from there just treat all everyone should always be progressing and working forward. And if you do tell them they’re amazing and they’re the best and they’re going to be so good in a few years, then it’s like they’re going to get bored of that thought and they’re going to move on to something else or they’re going to, yeah, throw that ego in.

1:12:16 That connects really nicely to Carol Dweck’s research. You might have read her book, Mindset. What she shows is that if you’re going to deal with a kid like that who’s really talented, it’s better to praise his or her effort than the talent itself. That’s it. You tell the kid, you’re great, and then when they fail, they start to think, well, I guess I wasn’t talented in this area, whereas you say, you succeeded at that because you worked really hard.

1:12:41 You’re reinforcing that when they fail, they just need to put in more practice and train harder, and then they’re much more likely to continue developing and improving. I like that. I try to remember that when I see a kid, and I see how hard they’re working rather than the moves they’re doing. Yeah, I mean, you want to teach them, right, that the reason they succeeded was because they put in deliberate practice. So you say, for example, what would he say to someone like that was really good work on that?

1:13:04 Or you put the time in and that’s why you were successful? So I think what you can do is you start by evaluating the performance, right? So you basically say, like in diving, for example, you have a zero to 10 score and so in practice what I would do every day when I was coaching divers would be to say, okay, you know, if we were to meet that dive would have been a six and a half and here’s what I really liked about it and here’s how I think you got there and then I would describe some Some of the moves of practice that I think were really critical in order to make that thing successful.

1:13:32 Then I would say, okay, here are the three things that I want you to do differently in the next dive to raise it to a seven. Okay. So you separate the dive from the person, the act from the ego. Absolutely. Okay.

1:13:43 On that whole younger generation note, I was wondering, there’s something about you, and then maybe you can share it out to people listening. If you had to make a phone call to the 20-year-old Adam Grant and give him a piece of advice and it can’t be keep going it can’t be you’re doing great what would it be you know what would you tell him to do differently the 20 year old Adam yeah how old are you 31 okay it’s not that long ago so we’re gonna go back a decade what would I tell myself what were you doing that you were Michigan I was in college so what would I what would I say I would probably say I don’t know I’ve never been asked that question it’s a very interesting question it’s very London Real question. Well, I’ll try to give you a London Real answer.

1:14:26 So I think my first response, which is probably not going to be the best one, is I would probably say I was struggling at that time actually with retiring from diving because I had like I had developed an identity as a diver and it was something that I did that I loved and I progressed at and I think I got to the point where I had maxed out on my talent and I also wasn’t loving it anymore. And I think what I would say is basically, look, your love of diving came not from the athletic achievement itself or the attempt to be graceful, but rather it came from, one, the challenge of mastering something that you were bad at and wanting to grow and improve and learn. And two, it also came from wanting to learn something that then you could teach to other people.

1:15:12 And so it’s not diving this part of your identity, right? It’s some of the discipline and courage that the sport taught you and also the opportunity then to be able to become a coach and help other people learn these skills. And so, you know, you can identify with lots of other things along with diving that provide both the learning and the teaching opportunities. That’s fascinating. That was really like applicable to me as well.

1:15:31 Yeah, I mean it sounds like somebody, how are you dealing with, I guess, I mean, the next few years you will, by definition, be doing less free running and more other stuff. Yeah, that’s the thing. Or have you already started? Yeah, I think I’ve already started taking more of a backseat approach and helping other upcoming talented freerunners get the best out of themselves and I see and I obviously did successful in competition and things so I’ve got an approach in like a logic mind where I can apply it so I want to help these other kids apply the mind that I had and teach them that the way to be creative and different and just be as unique as possible I think the best way to serve the sport which is a shame in diving is uniqueness wasn’t really valued in that but with my sport the more unique you are the better you can serve the sport and so that’s what I’m trying to do. It sounds like you had kind of a weird crisis point where you’re like I want to keep diving but I don’t like it but It’s part of my identity.

1:16:14 Probably all your friends did it, and you had all these weird things. Did you ever have that crisis point with free running? I feel like I’m similar, close to that now. But now? Where it’s like, I’ve done, I’ve achieved what I wanted to achieve, and the sport’s gonna grow, and I will stay relevant within it, and I do enjoy it, but there’s times I’m like, I wanna help heal the world more than like, I wanna, yeah, it sounds like hippie shit, but it’s like, there’s more to life than free running.

1:16:37 And I speak to other free runners, and they just see free running as the start and the end of their life right now, because that’s their career. For me, I think I want to expand beyond that and look at Arnold Swartz and I go, he went beyond bodybuilding, governor of California. I’ve got an American passport, you know? Uh-oh. Here we go.

1:16:51 You don’t seem like a man in crisis, though. No, no. Does he? Not to me. No, no.

1:16:57 I just deal with it. But it’s not, yeah, that’s why it’s not a crisis point. But it is a point where I think everyone has and you have to choose when you can do more with your life by moving on. And it’s like… You remind me, actually, a lot of what I heard from…

1:17:10 Do you guys know Jeremy Gilly? He was basically a struggling British actor who just started thinking as like he played these small parts in different movies that he should be doing something more with his passion for both producing and acting in movies, and he couldn’t let go of the idea of creating a more peaceful world. He decided that he was going to start a World Peace Day as a 20-something sort of actor and part-time film producer and he actually went and got a UN resolution passed to create a day in September that’s World Peace Day. I think I’ve heard of that. It’s an amazing story. I can brief some of the story. Yeah and you know I think it’s a really interesting example right of saying like I have these talents and I’ve been using them in ways that you know that are kind of interesting but they’re not doing as much good in the world as they could be. Yeah yeah. Wow wow and on the same note so that you would basically tell the 20 year old self just to kind of understand that that’s why it is and to move on to other things and not to cherish that sport too much.

1:18:12 Now what would you say to the 20-year-old listening right now and they’re like okay I got the whole life ahead of them, they’re trying to make some decisions at university, they’re probably trying to think maybe I should start giving more than taking. I don’t know. Do you have any thoughts? Yeah, I’m always reluctant to encourage people to say, you know, you should be more of a giver or you should be more of a matcher, right? I think we all need a balance and, you know, I don’t ever feel like I’m in a position to judge what somebody else ought to be doing.

1:18:35 I think the best advice that I’ve ever gotten on sort of decision-making came from Ellen Langer, a social psychologist, who said, you know, a lot of us basically struggle with decisions where we’re really torn and we agonize over them and we get into sort of an analysis paralysis so we don’t know what to do. And she said, most of the time, what you have to realize is it’s not about making the right decision, it’s about making the decision right. And her point was basically that, you know, a lot of times most of what happens with the decisions we make is what we make of them afterward, right, and whether we can make them a good decision.

1:19:08 So like if you were, you know, torn between which job to take or which university to attend or where to live, right, the choice itself is going to matter a lot less than what you make out of it. And I think that realizing that has been really helpful to say, like, a lot of times with choices you can flip a coin and then say, all right, if I choose this one, how will I make sure that that becomes a really good choice? Yeah, and committing to that, commitment, like, once you made it, you put a commitment not look back. I think that really helps you get places. So don’t make the right decision, don’t worry about making the right decision, make the decision right.

1:19:37 So it’s kind of like owning your fate or owning your choice. Yeah a little bit and you know most of us do that naturally anyway right this is like the the power of being rationalizing animals. You know you make a choice and it kind of didn’t work out and you know nobody likes to like walk around with that cognitive dissonance of like I made a really dumb choice so you find the silver lining and you make the most of it but I think what What happens is when we’re making the decision, we don’t pay attention to that.

1:20:03 We don’t know yet that we’re going to try to make the best of it. That’s true. We don’t think about it. We just worry about what if, what if, and yeah. You dedicated your book to Jeff Zaslow, and I was wondering if you could just tell us who he is.

1:20:14 Yeah, absolutely. So Jeff was an amazing writer. He wrote the last lecture with Randy Pausch and a series of other wonderful books who I grew up across the street from. And he actually, so he was a neighbor growing up, family friends, and gave me a ton of advice for the book and actually helped me come up with the concept and structure it. He was tragically killed in a car accident shortly before I had finished the book.

1:20:38 He was one of these people who really exemplified every giver principle that I’ve written about. I was a kid who just grew up across the street from him and he was willing to take a bunch of time to help me think about my ideas and develop my own writing as an author. He would just drop everything whenever somebody needed him and usually it took him about four minutes to respond to emails and I just thought he was an amazing role model. Wow. Wow.

1:21:05 It’s hard losing someone close to you, I have before, but actually that whole thing teaches you so much too because you value so much, the people around you, your own life and like all that stuff. So that’s really powerful. What’s next for you? What’s the next year look like for you? Are there more books coming down the pike?

1:21:23 Are you like, I’m going to write a book once every couple of years kind of guy? Or is this going to be like more, more, more books, more ideas? It’s a dangerous question. So I feel like I want to wait a little longer to see how readers are reacting. I’ve been encouraged by some of the feedback I’ve been given takes so far, but I think it takes a couple of months.

1:21:40 It’s only been out a month now, so I want to see kind of what the general response is. I loved writing the book. It was really fun to pull together the stories and the studies to try to create this picture or of a different way to achieve success. And I think if people like it, I would say, in the next three to five years, I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up writing another one on a different topic. And I don’t know what yet I want to write about, but there’s something that I think somebody should write a book about, which is about how the pursuit of happiness makes us unhappy, which I think is a really interesting paradox.

1:22:12 There’s some data just coming out. Maya Tamir and June Gruber and her colleagues have these studies showing that if you set a goal to become happier, it reduces your likelihood becoming happy. And I think that there could be a whole chapter that says don’t read books about happiness. And looks at all the misery that people put themselves through when instead of experiencing life, they’re sitting around thinking about, well, why aren’t I happy and how can I be happier? So I think that’s what folks somebody ought to write.

1:22:36 There’s a quote, someone went to Buddha and went, I want happiness. He said, okay, first remove I, because that’s ego, then remove want, because that’s desire, and then you’re left with happiness. So you desire an ego and then you’ve got happiness. Don’t want anything, don’t have an ego. Just be human beings. That sounds like the concluding chapter to that book. That’s awesome. It’s part of the Constitution is it in America or it’s part of some document? It is. Like a life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

1:23:06 Yeah and happiness is unquantifiable, something a guy like you hates. It drives me crazy that it’s hard to measure. You want numbers right? Yeah And so yeah, it’s an interesting thing to measure that in them is it Bhutan or what this country where they measure the gross gross national happiness Here in the UK now, there’s there’s a national index. They’re talking there’s talk of it, right? Yeah, that’s okay. That’s interesting to you That’s how they should measure countries right unhappiness not that’s more valuable than any currency word, um You know Tim Ferriss said he didn’t want his books coming out like a movie and having a big weekend debut He’s like, I want my books on the New York Times bestseller list forever.

1:23:48 And it sounds like that would be a cool thing for you, and it sounds like even just promoting this book can take the next year and things like that. But I mean, everyone’s saying great things about it so far, so thank you for writing this. Thank you. I’m honored that people are reading it. Yeah, it must be a cool thing.

1:24:03 I mean, is it your first book? Yes, yep. Yeah, that’s a pretty cool thing. I mean, most writers, our first three books go in the bin, right? It’s one of those things where you’re sitting writing it, and you’re like, I wonder if anyone other than my mother is going to read this and you just don’t know well well done man yeah definitely well done thank you um thanks for coming on if people want to follow you what’s the best way is it Twitter website how do people get in contact with you so probably the easiest place to go is the give and take comm website cleverly named we worked on that for months we there are a bunch of links to Twitter LinkedIn and Facebook feeds but there’s some fun tools on the site that I really enjoyed putting together with with our tech team, so there’s a self-assessment you can take if you wanna rate yourself on whether you think like a giver, taker, or a matcher.

1:24:48 But better yet, there’s a 360 assessment where anyone you know can rate you anonymously and then you get feedback on how they view you. So, try that one in your own risk. Okay, and do you ever give anybody, I know you don’t give advice, but if someone wants to be like, all right, I’m gonna try this whole giving nonsense for the next week, I mean, do you just say like simple things like try to do a favor for someone or try to pay something forward? Or is there anything like a starter’s kit?

1:25:13 Five minute favor, right? Yeah, the five minute favor is a great one, I think. So in the back of Give and Take, there’s a section on action for impact where I highlight the 10 ways that I think are most sort of efficient and productive to begin incorporating a little more giving if you wanted to do it. And one of my favorites is actually just to ask a few people what they’re working on and whether there’s any way you can be helpful. And a lot of people will say no, but you pick up some things you didn’t know before and sometimes you can pitch in.

1:25:39 And get some good energy out of it. All right, very cool, awesome. Tim, what’s up for your next? Just enjoying life. Just doing the do.

1:25:48 How many videos are you putting out a week? Three or four. That’s it. Do some acting, finally. Really?

1:25:54 Do some acting. What are you doing? Comedy, because everyone with free running wants to go the whole action thing, and I want to do comedy. Are you bored with action? Yeah, I never got started with action because I see too many people do it.

1:26:04 So me and Damien Walters wrote an office-type script and then acted it out. So we’re like big egos behind, it’s behind the scenes and we’re like massive egos. Kind of like extras, office. Like behind the scenes of your, of the making of your movies. That’s really cool.

1:26:16 But we’re hoping some people believe that’s what we’re really like, that’d be quite cool. And there’s no physicality in these things. There’s a little bit, we’ve got stunt doubles, dressed as us. And we’re like divas that are like, we can’t be bothered to do that, but yeah. So you guys are pretending to be takers.

1:26:29 Yeah, yeah, exactly. Nobody does that, everybody does the opposite. That’s what we’re like. Yeah, but yeah, it’s an idea for comedy, I guess. That’s funny.

1:26:36 Are there more life in the handstand videos? Sorry. No, at the moment. Have you wrapped the series? For now, yes.

1:26:42 And it was at 6? 5. I didn’t make it to 6. 5. I had the 6-1 plan but it was too hard to get it done then.

1:26:47 Okay. Have you watched these? Oh yeah. Man, they’re really intense. Yeah.

1:26:52 That’s cool. Alright. Kud, your channel on YouTube is Flow, right? Yeah. YouTube.com slash Flow.

1:26:57 YouTube.com slash Live. It’s my personal one. I do a lot more vlogs on my personal one now about diet, lifestyle, thoughts, things like the dreams. I’m going to do something on that. That’s how I sleep.

1:27:05 Are you doing? Hydration. I filmed vlogs on my diet because a lot of people asked that, so that was a starting point. But I don’t want it to just be, I don’t want to just get labeled as a vegan because people hate it. I want to move on.

1:27:18 There’s so much more happiness than just diet. It just is a big factor. Okay. Fair enough. Awesome.

1:27:24 Brian, tell us what’s next for you. What’s next for me? Oh, man. Good giver question. He’s a giver.

1:27:30 Yeah, well he knows how to look like a giver. I don’t know. It’s all good. You know, no one’s ever asked me that, but thank you. You know, we’re just going to keep doing shows here, you know, I just love meeting…

1:27:43 Any good guests? Coming up. Yeah, everyone always kind of wants to know who the next guest is, but I know. And I always feel like, oh wait, you’re taking value from me, from who I’m being associated with. But I’m like, okay, I’ll give you that.

1:27:53 You know, the guy who wrote the movie Trainspotting, Irving Welsh, is going to be here in a couple of weeks, so very curious to sit down with him. And the cage fighter James Thompson is going to be here, so he’s a writer as well, so It’s nice to have another writer and just kind of see their dynamic, but no, yeah, just, I mean, I just love meeting all these cool people. I’m so fortunate and not letting reels kind of getting big enough to where people will show up here.

1:28:15 And so like, I’m just grateful to all the fans that make, I mean, literally, I wouldn’t be able to sit down with you and have this conversation. If you were rolling through town, even though I was like, Hey, let’s have lunch. You’d be like, I’m really kind of busy, but I hope that wouldn’t be my ex-wife. Not this guy. Not this guy.

1:28:29 You know, maybe you wouldn’t meet you. Would you meet me for lunch? Yeah. I met you twice before. You’re committed now.

1:28:35 Yeah, yeah. But you know what? Before I was on the show, I hadn’t actually seen an episode and since I went and I loved the show. I’ve seen Jack Fresco, Graham Hancock, who was the one I mentioned earlier, Rupert Sheldrake, Dorian Yates was amazing. Yeah, I get these texts from Tim.

1:28:51 Rupert Sheldrake is awesome. That’s nice. Okay, that’s cool. So is there a guest that you most want to have that you haven’t been able to get yet? Joe Rogan or something?

1:29:00 You know, I’ve met Joe because we were on his show. he comes to London my great to have him but the one guest that I want is ice tea the hip-hop really yeah I was like why I’ve been a big fan since I was a kid I listened to his music in high school and I just he’s he writes books and he’s just a really intelligent guy he always stuck to his guns with his music you know he had some pretty explicit lyrics and he never went to change that for radio play and he really you know he’s just I just like the way he’s become himself, and now lately he’s gotten famous with a reality show with his wife, Coco, and that whole thing, and now people meet that iced tea, but I always knew the old iced tea, and so yeah, he’s out there. I’ve put this energy out there, and he was in London like a year ago to do a movie premiere and I tried, but it wasn’t happening, but I love to sit down with ice just because I think he transcends everything, and yeah, he had some tough battles there, and not everything he did, I necessarily agree with, but I admire the fight.

1:29:56 We came out with a song called Cop Killer and you got a lot of hard times in the States about it. Didn’t you soon get caught masturbating outside there? Did you hear about that? No, I didn’t. That’s it.

1:30:06 That’s my hero. Anyways, that can be confirmed or not, yeah, it doesn’t really. But yeah, that’s why I’d like to have him on. But you know, just anyone with a cool story, you know, is always nice to be on. And for me, it’s nice when we get to feature people like you that they might not have heard about and they’re like, wow, that’s really cool.

1:30:24 So that kind of makes me happy. There you go. So hopefully we did that today. I think it was awesome. It was really cool hearing your stories.

1:30:31 Yeah. Some really good insight there. And your perspectives. Thanks for being on the show as a co-host. How was it?

1:30:36 Grant. Anytime. Really? Yeah. We might do more of this.

1:30:41 Cool. I don’t know. But some people stress about being a co-host because they’re like, no, no, no. They should talk too much. They’re not talking enough.

1:30:46 Like Sheldrick said, just go with the flow. Yeah. Yeah. You were perfect as usual. Anyways, I just want to thank the guys at X-Brain for sponsoring the show.

1:30:51 If you want to get Alpha Brain, Bulletproof Coffee, all their stuff, go to xbrain.co.uk. If you’re listening to us on iTunes, please subscribe, and if you want to see our faces, come to our channel on YouTube, our channel London Real TV. We’re on Twitter, as are these guys, and we’re on Facebook, and that’s it, man. If you want to intern for London Real, send me an email, info at LondonReal.tv. I get like two a day.

1:31:14 It’s awesome. There’s all these people helping us out and stuff, so. That’s it. Until then, gentlemen, it’s about the journey. I remember it on the train here, it’s the, that’s my line, isn’t it?

1:31:23 Is it? Oh, you’re gonna say it’s about the journey? Yeah, I say it’s about the journey. Alright, go ahead. It’s about the journey.

1:31:28 Alright, peace gentlemen, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Finding an editorial in the New York Times where he gets on his knees and he flakes Ben Bernanke in public. It’s not the most disgraceful thing, as an American, I cry.

1:31:41 So here’s the New York Times on an Indian knee pads, and he’s got, he’s got balls, he’s got Bernanke’s balls slapping on his chin, he’s gobbling Bernanke’s goo, he’s saying you have to trust the chairman the chairman take care guys thanks